Police commissioners

Bobbies on the ballot

The most radical transformation of policing in decades has begun

THERE are no campaign banners yet, and no flyers through the letterbox. Most people do not even know that it is happening. But a new breed of elected commissioners to hold police forces to account is coming into being across England and Wales, and candidates are racing to stake their claim. The government's least noticed but perhaps most radical public-service reform is hurtling forward.

On November 15th voters in each of the 41 police-force areas outside London will be able to choose a person to supervise their local bobbies. These police and crime commissioners (PCCs) will set force priorities, run their budgets and hire and fire chief constables. They replace police authorities—low-profile committees that have tried to police the coppers until now. Operational decisions are to remain with the chief constable, but the new PCCs will have wide powers. It is a sharp turn for a country that counts among its ancestors Robert Peel, who held that politics and policing should be kept separate.

The government hopes that visible, elected figures will make the police more responsive to local priorities, especially where low-level disorder is concerned. It might, but there are risks. Individual PCCs will be relatively unfettered, except, every four years, by an electorate which may not feel like bothering. Many force areas are too big and diverse for genuinely local views to have much of an impact at the top: Thames Valley, for example, encompasses tough, urban Slough and the pastures around Chipping Norton. And there will be complicated overlaps with the directly-elected mayors that the government is also keen to see proliferate. A new mayor of Birmingham, say, will want a strong say in West Midlands policing on his or her beat. It will take impressively independent-minded people to make a success of the PCC role.

Tribunes of the people

It was thought, early on, that high-profile non-political worthies would be best suited to the job and likely to rise to the occasion. That hasn't happened so far. Most of the declared candidates are standing for political parties with the resources to run campaigns that many think could cost £50,000 ($78,000) or more.

Colonel Tim Collins, known for a Shakespearean eve-of-battle address in Iraq, threw his Conservative hat into the ring in Kent last October. Vowing to turn the police into “ratcatchers, not social workers”, he became the Tory poster boy for the reform, though more recent hints that he would quite like to do the job part-time have furrowed brows. The Labour Party, which opposed elected commissioners but has decided to field candidates anyway, now has a poster boy of its own in the burly form of Lord (John) Prescott. Earlier this month the former deputy to former prime minister Tony Blair said he would like to take on the Humberside police.

Labour, which closes its lists at the end of February, has recently seen an explosion of candidates. And the Conservatives say almost 400 people have expressed an interest. (The Liberal Democrats do not intend to field party candidates, though some Lib Dems want to stand anyway.)

Other candidates may come forward in May, after local-government elections and referendums in at least ten cities on whether to have elected mayors have produced losers. Until then local councillors and police-authority members looking for a high-profile leg up to national office and former heavyweights looking for a graceful way down predominate. Only a handful of women have shown interest, and another of ethnic minorities. A few former chief constables swell the ranks of the hopeful.

One place where a genuine choice seems to be emerging is South Wales. This month Alun Michael, a former Labour minister and co-author at one time of his party's crime policy, declared his interest. He is popular in Cardiff but seen as a party man, and another candidate is dividing Labour loyalties—Paul Cannon, a policeman for 30 years who now serves on the council of Rhondda Cynon Taff. Both are up against one of the few widely admired independents the elections have yet to produce. Simon Weston fought in the Falklands, recovered from horrendous burns received there and went on to do charitable work and inspire youth.

Pundits confess themselves baffled as to how the vote is likely to go in November. The Tories are more trusted than Labour on law and order, but local-government voting patterns suggest that Labour could end up with PCCs for most of the forces that include big cities. Political affiliations may not matter much in practice. Though Labour candidates swear that their hearts lie in policing to protect the vulnerable and Tories that they will get rid of speed cameras, both will above all promise to protect visible policing—bobbies on the beat—because that is what poll after poll shows the public wants. More extravagant promises will run into the reality of police budgets set to shrink by up to 20% over the life of this parliament.

Getting the vote out

What matters more than what party bags which job is turnout. This reform shakes up policing tradition in the name of democratic legitimacy. But November is an electoral graveyard in Britain and the contests have yet to capture the popular imagination. Except in cities which decide to vote for a new mayor on the same day, turnover may well fall short of 20% or so. Some fear that, with few people bothering to vote, loony candidates will sneak in. If PCCs cannot claim any great electoral mandate, the reform will look pointless at best. Especially if some of them, swaggering around like sheriffs, prompt an outflow of seasoned chief constables.

So much will depend on how well the PCCs run their shows. Critics have long fretted that they will tend towards more authoritarian policing styles, on the ground that this is what voters think they want (see Bagehot). But another outcome is equally likely: that PCCs will drive forward the shift toward sharing facilities, outsourcing and bringing in private partners that is already beginning to transform policing as budget cuts bite. They will have just one goal—maintaining visible policing—and need not talk round an entire committee.

Nick Herbert, the policing minister and author of the reform, believes this will happen, and that the changes will go wider. The PCC is to be the centre around which other bits of the criminal-justice system coalesce. From 2013-14 PCCs will be given the community-safety budgets that used to go to local councils. They may also get money to commission victim support, and the door is open on probation services. In London, whose elected mayor already has responsibility for the police, drugs-intervention money is being diverted to the newly opened Mayor's Office for Policing and Crime.

Yet for all that electing police commissioners is an attempt to give more power to the people, central government is not relaxing the reins entirely. PCCs must respect national policing requirements; money must be spent on certain services; procurement will be more centralised than before. It is a bet that the people know best, but a well-hedged one.